journal features

movie review - Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2004.12.27

When I was leaving the cinema at the end of the third volume of the Lord of the Rings movie, I realized that I'd just witnessed the high point of my movie-going career, and that it would be mostly downhill from there.

I had no idea how quickly and how far that downward ride would go, until the 1/4 mark of Anchorman. This movie is just plain appalling. Unfunny, painfully lowbrow, and pointless.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton